Good police work and clear CCTV led to the conviction of a Bookham man who stole thousands of pounds of lead from a listed building.

Terry Barnes, 30, of Church Road, appeared at Guildford Crown Court for sentencing last Friday after pleading guilty to stealing lead from the roof of the Leatherhead Registry Office in December last year.

Barnes, a self-employed artist, was given a nine month custodial sentence suspended for two years, a 24 month supervision order and the stolen property and the vehicle used for the theft were confiscated.

The theft took place on May 5 last year when Barnes stole £5,509 worth of lead, causing £28,669 worth of damage to the listed building which dates from the 17th century.

Susan Curran, the superintendent registrar at the Church Street building, spoke to the Advertiser about the chaos caused by Barnes' actions.

"He stole the whole of the top of the roof and, of course, it rained and when it rained it came through and damaged all the offices upstairs.

"This is a listed building so everything has to be put back as it should be. The worst thing about it was that it took nearly eight weeks to do all the work.

"We had to have scaffolding at the back of our building on the patio which is where the couples have their photographs taken.

"We had to phone 72 couples and explain to them that unfortunately they wouldn't be able to do the photographs for them which was very upsetting for them," she said.

She added that she and other staff had to use buckets to clean up the water and stop the building getting damaged even further.

But the registrar praised the dogged police work of investigating officers Fran Davey and Jason Woods as well as the quality of the CCTV footage which led to Barnes being caught.

PC Fran Davey, the neighbourhood officer for Leatherhead, said: "The reason he was caught was because of very good CCTV.

"Because the CCTV was good quality we could see facial features, the vehicle and number plates."

PC Davey added: "Around 70 weddings were inconvenienced because of his act. The roof started leaking and it was quite a problem."

She said that replacing the lead, which had to be sourced from the north of England, was very expensive.